By Jonathan B. Wight

It is way too soon to know how a major policy change—in this case taxes—will work out.

Yet the early signs are that Republicans have redistributed wealth to the top without creating any requisite increase in growth that would pay for this redistribution, or that would enable gains to trickle down to those below.

Krugman (not an unbiased observer) writes:

“the effects of the Trump tax cut are already looking like the effects of the Brownback tax cut in Kansas, the Bush tax cut and every other much-hyped tax cut of the past three decades: big talk, big promises, but no results aside from a swollen budget deficit.”

Supply side elixirs can actually work in some conditions to stimulate growth, but similar to real estate only three things matter: context, context, and context.

U.S. growth may be more constrained today by growing inequality than by high marginal personal tax rates. It may be more constrained by a crumbling public infrastructure than by high corporate taxes. Lowering the corporate tax rate was a good idea in theory, but not at the expense of increasing the deficit by more than a trillion dollars, and pushing needed infrastructure improvements to the back burner.